It was as healthy an environment as could be imagined. A sunny Saturday in the green and pleasant south of England. At Winchester College, a public school founded in 1382, the institution honored one of its famous old boys – Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan of Pataudi, popularly known as the Tiger, one of India’s greatest cricket captains.
It commemorates Wykeham Day in the school calendar or the first cricket match played 200 years ago between Winchester and Eton, another ancient school.
At a grand ceremony in the school’s cricket pavilion, Bill Holland, a member of the governing body, invited a large audience to view a plaque commemorating Tiger, who still holds the record for the most runs in a season in Winchester history.
In his speech, Holland quoted the great West Indies all-rounder Sir Gary Sobers about Tiger, saying, ‘He was so good that he would have changed Don (Don Bradman)’s record.’
At the same ceremony, a plaque was also displayed to Douglas Jardine, another Old Boy who was controversial but successful as England captain. There was some irony about this, as Jardine and Tiger’s father, Nawab Iftikhar Ali Khan of Pataudi, had fallen out during the infamous ‘Bodyline’ series in Australia in 1932–33.
However, if there were any differences of opinion between the two families – Tiger’s son Bollywood filmstar Saif Ali Khan was also in attendance – it was by no means obvious. It was all civility and etiquette.
Jardine was born in Malabar Hill, Bombay, now Mumbai, to Scottish parents Malcolm Jardine, a barrister, and Alison Moir. He entered Winchester in 1914. In his final year playing for the school in 1919, he scored 997 runs at an average of 66.46.
Success in that era of competition between top boarding schools was a launch pad for adoption by major universities, first-class counties, not to mention ‘gentlemen’s teams’ – or upper-class ‘amateurs’ – versus ‘players’ or working-class ‘professionals’, who played for money. A class distinction that existed in English cricket until it was abolished in 1963.
Jardine made his debut for England in 1928 against the touring West Indies. Three years later, he was appointed captain for the Test against New Zealand. He was retained as captain for the challenging tour of Australia in 1932–33.
The mountain that England had to overcome was Bradman’s insatiable hunger for runs. However, there was a belief among the English pundits Bradman was sometimes vulnerable to rising balls on rain-affected pitches – those were the days of open wickets. Jardine watched film footage of Bradman batting in a Test at The Oval in London in 1930. Despite the Australian run machine scoring 232 runs, he felt discomfort.
Jardine told the Nottinghamshire county fast bowlers, Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, that Bradman was vulnerable against bowling directed at the leg stump and could be stopped by this line of attack. And asked if he could bowl accurately on the leg stump and deliver the ball to the batsman’s chest. The bowlers said they could. Thus sealing what became infamously known as ‘Leg Theory’ or bodyline bowling.
In 1932, Iftikhar Ali Khan, nicknamed Pat, scored a brilliant 165 for the Gentlemen against the Players, earning them a place on the next winter tour. He made his Test debut in the first Test in Sydney; In fact it was marked by a century. But he was ignored for the remainder of the series. Jardine eliminated him because Pat objected to bodyline methods and refused to field in a leg trap. Jardine commented sharply, ‘I see that His Excellency is a conscientious objector!’
Wisden Cricket Almanack described the series as ‘possibly the most controversial tour in history’. Acrimonious telegrams were exchanged between the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) and the Marylebone Cricket Club, who were the administrators of the game in England at the time. The Governor of South Australia, Alexander Hore-Ruthven, expressed concern to the British Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, James Henry Thomas, that there could be a significant impact on trade between the two countries. Subsequently, the Australian Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons, spoke to the ACB, who withdrew their charge of ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’ by the English side.
The following winter, Jardine returned to India as England captain in the first official Test series to be held in the subcontinent. Indeed, the opening encounter took place at the Bombay Gymkhana in the city of his birth, which the visiting team won by nine wickets, with Jardine scoring 60 runs in the only innings.
Iftikhar Ali Khan died of a heart attack while playing polo in Delhi on 5 January 1952, Tiger’s 11th birthday. Two years later he was sent to Winchester. In his four years donning the colors of the school’s First XI (known as Lord’s), he scored 2,956 runs. He played his first match at the age of 14 against New College, Oxford and scored 44 not out. In 1957, he played a brilliant inning of 124 not out and took MCC to a strong position. The following summer he faced a Sussex XI. their school magazine the wykehamist Wrote, ‘Pataudi turned what was already a good innings into a storm of powerful hitting. He can do no wrong. In one over, he gave 20 runs to DCS Compton (England’s star), while Compton was standing and applauding with the rest. He scored an unbeaten 100 runs.
In his final year, when he also led the team, he broke Jardine’s 40-year-old record by scoring 1,068 runs in a season at an average of 71.20. This included 120 out of 204 for nine at the expense of Sussex. If Tiger took quiet satisfaction with his achievement, he never expressed it publicly. Jardine died last year.
While at Winchester, he made his first-class debut for Sussex at the age of 16, where distinguished Indian-born England Test players, the great Kumar Sri Ranjitsinhji, Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, present-day Jamnagar, and his nephew Kumar Sri Dalipsinhji, had preceded him.
He was also very good at Oxford, where he scored a century against Cambridge and became the first Indian to captain the university. In 1961, he punished the Yorkshire attack, which included the fiery Freddy Trueman at the peak of his skills, and his England colleagues Ray Illingworth and Don Wilson, for a century in each innings, thereby confirming an extraordinary talent. He was on his way to the university to break up his father’s run-down party when tragedy struck. He was in a car accident in Hove, Sussex, which resulted in permanent damage to his right eye. A piece of glass entered his right eye. After the surgery, he was given contact lenses for the affected eye.
Tiger was addicted to smoking at that time. He told me that after being discharged from the hospital, he reached for the lighter lying on the table, but he could not pick it up. He was experiencing double vision of everything at a distance of about six inches. He went towards the external object, which became a false image. So when it came to resuming cricket, he immediately took off his lens, covered his right eye with his cap and started playing the ball inside out with one eye.
He told me that the India selectors never asked about the severity of his injury, nor did the Board of Control for Cricket in India ask him to get an eye test. He admitted that if he had done so, he would never have worn the India Blazer. Less than six months after the accident, he made his Test debut against the touring England team. He scored a century in his third innings in Chennai and then in Madras. He was asked when after the injury he decided that he would play Test cricket. Always a man with a laconic sense of humour, he reputedly replied, ‘When I saw English bowling for the first time.’
It was unbelievable that Tiger ever played Test cricket. Colin Milburn, the English batsman with a similar handicap, never did this. In the trials Tiger was, supposedly, more cautious than his dashing younger self. Despite his handicaps, he remained one of the most influential fielders of his generation. It is said that Indian wicketkeeper Saba Karim’s career ended due to an eye injury and he asked Tiger how much time it took for him to recover. Tiger is said to have replied, ‘I never recovered.’
Expressing anything fast was unfortunately too fast for him – as his performance in the West Indies in 1962 testified. Nevertheless, his essays of 144 at Headingley, Leeds and 75 and 85 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1967 underlined an innate skill. Ian Chappell, standing at slip, gasped in praise of the one-eyed, one-legged Tiger (because he was) Horse Day Combat While the other suffered a torn muscle) put the Australian bowlers under Graham McKenzie to the sword.
As India captain, he shunned parochialism, introduced a sense of purpose and an emphasis on fielding – all of which were absent until now. As he progressed in the job, his tactical genius improved and his final series against the West Indies in 1974–75 epitomized this.
It is a matter of conjecture how well he would have done without the misfortune of low vision. in his book tiger story He wrote poignantly, ‘A man who has only one good eye and little else has to settle for something less than the perfection he once desired.’ Undoubtedly, India’s talent has been lost in the flannel game!
